


crossfire

by openhearts



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: F/M, episode: s1e4 can you hear me now?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:14:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26924194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openhearts/pseuds/openhearts
Summary: She goes back to the motel that night._Written sometime in 2010, not long after this episode aired I'm sure.  I thought it was unfinished at the time, but after a decade and a reread with a few eensy tweaks, here we are.Title from Crossfire by Brendon Flowers
Relationships: Spencer Hastings/Wren Kingston
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	crossfire

She goes back to the motel that night. 

The girls helped her clean up the mirror and the bizarre geranium grave – and for just a second she’s grateful she won’t have to explain that it didn’t get there by A’s doing in the first place.

Spencer almost asks to go with one of them, but to be honest it’s not about the company - she just doesn’t want to think about A anymore. Spending time with any of them won’t provide the escape she needs since they’re all reminders to each other of this mess none of them can fix.

And maybe part of her – a big part she’s trying to ignore for right now because it’s too much on top of Melissa and the paper and everything – blames herself for this latest escalation of A’s methods. She was the one to suggest they all block A’s messages.

And, accidentally, Wren’s calls. He’s like a feather, tickling at the edge of her mind ever since they kissed. The next day it became all about Melissa, and her parents’ beleaguered expressions, and finding a way, any way, to get ahead so she can get out from under this latest misstep.

But tonight the invasion was in her house, her home, and it’s too much for Spencer. As if this house wasn’t enough of a minefield already.

Spencer tosses a change of clothes and a few toiletries in a bag. She glances at the mirror for a second and a stray smudge of Jungle Red catches her eye. She steps forward and rubs at it with her thumb, but it just smears into a fingerprint-y swirl. She draws her hand back from the mirror and inspects the shimmering coat of it on the pad of her finger. She looks at herself in the mirror again, glances to the background of the reflection at her desk, the Gehry book Wren had picked up sitting in its place on the shelf. 

Spencer rubs her fingers together, but the color sticks stubbornly, staining.

_

When she gets to the motel she realizes she doesn’t remember Wren’s room number. Her mind was too clouded with the twist of a smile on his mouth when he’d invited her in (but it had almost sounded like an order and not a request and somehow being told what to do didn’t sound so bad right then. Plus her brain had kind of stalled on the thought of “inside” for several seconds while she heard herself spouting something about stupidity) to recall the numbers on the door behind him.

Just that realization that her powers of observation had slipped so far from their normal acuity should be enough to make her turn back, but she’s pulled onward.

She parks approximately where she thinks she had before, near the end of the eastern wing of rooms, furthest from the entrance, and sits staring for a moment with her hands wrapped tight around the steering wheel. 

She’s reaching for her phone to see if there’s a way to access a log of blocked calls – trying not to estimate the number of times Wren may have tried to call, and trying not to let it start to matter because she’s here already and it was a bad idea so she doesn’t need to get herself too invested – when a door opens and Wren steps out. He’s walking towards his car, parked a few spots down, and she just sits and watches him. 

He even walks British, she thinks absently, and can’t suppress the laugh that bubbles up in her throat. 

He opens the trunk and leans in, then straightens and she sees a bag in his hand – apparently he’d been so set on his mission of a drunken confrontation with her father that he hadn’t even brought in the bag he’d thought to pack. He closes the trunk and starts back toward his room and Spencer is frozen for a few seconds before she grabs her purse and gets out of the car, still standing with one foot next to the brake pedal when she calls out his name.

_

He waggles the bottle back and forth at her and she, like usual around him, smiles and nods against her better judgment. 

“Ever had Scotch before?” he asks as he splashes some into a provided plastic cup. “Ice?” 

She nods and he drops a few cubes in. She takes a sip and wheezes a little, pressing a hand to her chest as the 100 proof haze rises into her sinuses. He raises his eyebrows at her reaction. 

“So I am corrupting you then,” he says through a smile as he sits next to her on the bed.

Spencer lowers the cup to her lap, both hands wrapped firmly around it. She inspects the points at which each ice cube breaches the surface of the caramel-y gold Scotch. She inhales when she feels his fingers brush over her neck as he gently moves her hair out of the way and leans in. His breath ghosts over her neck and she shivers before his lips even touch her skin. 

There’s a pause and Wren pulls away slightly.

“Are you alright?” he asks quietly. 

He draws a light steady line down her spine from the back of her neck to the waistband of her jeans with one fingertip. Spencer straightens and arches under his touch, her eyes still closed as they’d fallen the moment he’d touched her.

She opens her eyes after a moment and glances sidelong at him. He looks concerned even through the twinkle in his eyes. 

She takes a breath and nods, but when she tries to add “I’m fine,” she chokes on the words. 

His hand flattens against the small of her back and he turns and pulls one leg up, knee bent on the bed so he’s facing her. He holds eye contact for a moment, then his eyes trail over her face as he speaks.

“Anything you want to talk about?”

She shakes her head quickly.

Wren nods and glances down at her fingers still clenched around the plastic cup.

“There’s no one to catch us here Spencer.”

His fingers curl and straighten against her back, wrinkling the fabric of her shirt.

She nods, slowly this time, somewhat mesmerized by his mouth.

It’s true; here, in a motel room ten miles outside Rosewood there’s no distractions, no safety net of conspicuousness to hold them back.

He leans in and pauses, seems to contemplate her chin for a long moment.

“But I don’t want you to feel you’re not safe with me,” he adds. 

His voice is hoarse, rough with Scotch, coffee, more Scotch. He looks up and catches her eye. And all she can do is stare back, feeding off his reassurance and cautiously skirting around her own doubts. She nods again. 

They slide closer, heads angling, and he whispers it once more: “You’re safe.”

As if he knows how much she’s needed to hear it lately, from anyone, not just him. As if he could hear the million unanswerable questions clogging her brain, could see the fear-filled voids where cohesive academic thoughts should be, could sense the tension always tightening over her with each grade, each threat, each wordless fight. 

_

When she drops her cup and it rolls across the thin carpet trailing Scotch and ice cubes he catches her elbow and shakes his head as he leans her backward. 

“Leave it,” he says to her neck. 

She scoots further up the bed and lays back, hands clasped loosely over her stomach. Wren crawls up to lay on his side next to her with his head propped on one hand.

“Hello,” he murmurs cheerfully.

She smiles. He looks startlingly young like this. But then she doesn’t often feel as if she’s on unequal ground with him, even though he’s six years older than her. It’s what’s started this whole thing really; he was accessible next to her out-of-reach sister and parents. Right there for the taking.

“Hi.”

“You’re having a pleasant evening?”

Spencer laughs at his put-on formality. “Yes,” she sighs quietly.

He pauses and leans down to kiss her once, almost a perfunctory gesture as he formulates his next sentence. 

“Have I told you,” he begins, tracing two fingertips up her chest along the line of the v-neck of her shirt, grinning even harder at her widening eyes, “how utterly,” he kisses her temple, “irresistibly,” below her ear, and then he whispers, with emphasis, “bloody attractive you are?”

She feels a little breathless as his hand rests lazily over her sternum, and she hopes briefly that he can’t make out the speed of her heartbeat, because she’s grasping at threads of her decorum.

“Hmmaybe,” she manages as he trails the tip of his tongue over her neck.

“Or,” he adds, voice muffled by her skin, “how positively scrumptious you taste?”

She makes a face. “Scrumptious?”

He pops up. “Are you making fun of my accent?”

She pulls a serious face. “Never.”

“Promise,” he adds, leaning in again. 

His hand slips to one side and he squeezes her breast gently. He watches her face as if he’s performing an experiment, flexing his fingers this way and that, watching with half amusement, half dark lust as her eyes close and her mouth opens around a sigh. 

“Yes,” she answers, reaching over and wrapping her hand around the back of his neck to bring his mouth the last few inches to hers. 

_

“Don’t think you need this anymore,” Wren mutters, tugging at the hem of her shirt. 

She sits up, watches his eyes close as her hips shift against him, and smirks a little when he fights to open them as she peels her shirt off and tosses it to one side. His hands rest gripping lightly on her thighs and he glares at the thin lace-edged tank she still has on. 

Spencer flattens her palms on his stomach and runs her hands up to his chest, sliding them underneath his t-shirt to pull it off over his head. He leans up and kisses along her collarbone, distracts her by sucking on her skin where her shoulder joins her neck. 

“Wren,” she sighs, abandoning the shirt to clutch at his shoulders. His arms circle around her waist, and he reaches up to splay one hand between her shoulder blades and the other cups the back of her head.

“Spencer,” he answers as he works more magic along the neckline of her tank.

She squeezes his shoulders tighter, moves her hands to cradle his head as he nuzzles against her chest. “Wren,” she repeats.

He looks up at her, all pained clouded eyes. “Spence, please,” he begs at the somber look on her face. He looks back down, and his forehead touches the base of her throat. “I can’t keep losing you.”

Her eyebrows knit together. “Losing me?” she asks. Her frown deepens. “When did you have me?”

“That’s what I want, don’t you see?” His arms drop from around her back and he reaches up to cup her face in his hands. “I know it’s complicated-” she scoffs, but her throat constricts around the sound at the smack of reality against her skin still glossed over with his kisses – “but eventually you have to break away from your family and start making your own decisions.”

She balks inwardly at this. Clearly he hasn’t paid much attention to her family. 

But in the same moment a little voice begs along with his, tantalizes her with college away from Rosewood, seeing him whenever she wants a shot to her self-esteem or a tumble between non-motel sheets. She feels, in advance, hours of them tangled together on weekend mornings, doing a crossword in one of his shirts while he makes breakfast. Something simple and light and everything her life now isn’t. 

On the tail end of her little fantasy, she remembers to exclude A, or any mention of Alison, blocked numbers, and lipstick threats.

The Jungle Red is gone from her thumb, disappeared somewhere hours ago. Spencer spares a glance at the clock and it reads two thirty a.m. She looks back at Wren.

“Can I just give you tonight?” he sighs.

She nods, takes his face in her hands and kisses him, smiles in nervous anticipation when he holds on to the back of her knee and flips them over so she’s laying on her back with him braced on top of her, murmuring her name and various synonyms for ‘beautiful’ over her skin.

_

Spencer reaches up and traces the bow of his upper lip and he kisses her fingertip as a smile grows on his face. She smiles in return. He kisses her bare shoulder, then her cheek. She’s lost track of where he hasn’t kissed her.

“I’m glad you stayed,” he says softly.

“I bet you are,” she snarks, before catching herself. She sighs, and smiles again, trying to take it back.

She feels a sudden sting of tears behind her eyes. They’re about too much stress and experience in one night and how good his hands felt even when it hurt. They’re about the moment he held still inside her, his breath touching her lips, and just looked into her wide eyes and didn’t grin, or say something cute. He breathed, and waited a moment, and watched her, and kissed her solidly and deeply before he began to move.

“Spencer,” he says, drawing back.

“No, no, it’s okay. I’m okay. Just,” she rolls her eyes a little with a forced smile and gestures in the air above them. He drops his forehead to her shoulder and she feels him sigh. She swallows back the lump in her throat and gently rearranges them so they’re on their sides, he’s curled against her back, and their hands tangle together in front of her. 

“Sure?” he asks.

“I’m okay.” She repeats.

She closes her eyes, and when he drops pecking kisses everywhere he can reach on the side of her face, her ear, and her neck she squirms and laughs. She elbows him in the ribs and he bites her earlobe. She just laughs harder and twists to get away from his tickling mouth and his own laughter loud in her ear. 

They quiet, and he still holds her hands.

_


End file.
